Bait POSTPONED CORONAVIRUS

23 June: 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

2019 – Certificate 15

– Bait –

The film that became Bait came to BAFTA award winning Director/writer Mark Jenkin in his boyhood on a beach in north Cornwall. It was summer, and the incomers were in flood. “Being on the north coast of Cornwall, growing up and going to beach parties – suddenly you look round and you realise you don’t know anybody but everybody there knows each other,” he says, from his home in west Cornwall. “This is our place, but we don’t know anybody.”

Martin Ward (Edward Rowe) is a is a cove fisherman without a boat., a gloweringly aggressive man who resents the incomers who have taken over his village. Fishing is in decline. Where once his industry used Bait to catch fish, now the whole community and the beautiful landscape are used as Bait to catch tourists. Only it feels as if the tourists are the ones who have the locals in their net.

His brother Steven has re-purposed their father’s vessel as a tourist tripper, driving a wedge between the brothers. With their childhood home now a get-away for London money, Martin is displaced to the estate above the picturesque harbour.

As his struggle to restore the family to their traditional place creates increasing friction with tourists and locals alike, a tragedy at the heart of the family changes his world.

The double-meaning of the title – literal fishing Bait and the colloquialism meaning something flagrantly shady – is fitting for the film’s salty, queasy sense of suspicion, outrage and doom.

Running Time 90 mins

Ratings Info 4 – 5 Star Cert 15

Director(s) Mark Jenkin

Cast includes Ed Rowe, Mary Woodvine, Giles Smith, Simon Shepherd

Nominations & Awards 7 wins from 17 nominations including BAFTA award for Outstanding Debut by British Writer/Producer/Director nominations for Outstanding British Film & Outstanding Debut by British Writer, Director or Producer

Guardian

It’s war between the locals and tourists in a once-thriving Cornish fishing village in Mark Jenkin’s dreamlike masterpiece

Cornish film-maker Mark Jenkin’s breakthrough feature is a thrillingly adventurous labour of love – a richly textured, rough-hewn gem in which form and content are perfectly combined. A refreshingly authentic tale of tensions between locals and tourists in a once-thriving fishing village, it’s an evocative portrait of familiar culture clashes in an area where traditional trades and lifestyles are under threat.

Bait is both an impassioned paean to Cornwall’s proud past, and a bracingly tragicomic portrait of its troubled present and possible future. It’s a genuine modern masterpiece, which establishes Jenkin as one of the most arresting and intriguing British film-makers of his generation.

Jenkin shot Bait without sound, effectively creating a silent movie to which dialogue, music and sound effects were added later, splendidly concertinaing a century of cinema history. The effect is bizarrely brilliant, lending a dreamlike quality to the dialogue. It’s the visuals, however, that lift Bait into the realms of timelessness and transcendence.

Having premiered to rapturous applause at the Berlinale in February, Bait looks set to become one of the defining British films of the year, perhaps the decade.

The Independent

Bait is a Cornish film that has hooked critics and cinemagoers wherever it has been shown. The black and white feature tells the story of a Cornish fishing village and the tensions between residents and incomers, younger and older generations, that simmer within it. It’s both poignant and relevant

Perhaps it’s this very uniqueness, in an era of CGI-heavy blockbusters, that put off the major chains. If you like interesting and original movies it would be worth your perusing it……………. an audience is what it deserves.

The Telegraph

Bait, is about the war – or, if you are subtle, and Bait is subtle, a negotiation – between the native population and the incomers; between poverty and excess; between a bucolic dream sold for money and what is real.

The Londoners are not pantomime villains. That would be too easy. They yearn too.

This is a story, then, about belonging as the world becomes more frightening; about people yearning for a past they romanticise but pursue anyway; about seeking your own space in a place that has none for you.

These are all fashionable themes, but Bait is special because it is spare, and distilled – a masterpiece. It is shot on film, and hand developed, and so it has the flickering look of classic cinema

Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus

As visually distinctive as it is narratively satisfying, Bait blends a classic aesthetic with timely themes to produce a thrillingly original and uniquely enriching drama.

How to book

Advance booking and payment to reserve places is politely requested. Tickets are £6 and £4 for students.

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